orn March 17, 1956, in Merced, California, Lee Udall
Bennion moved to Utah in 1974 to study art at Brigham
Young University. In 1976, she married ceramist Joseph
Bennion and moved to the rural setting of Spring City,
Sanpete County, Utah. She has three daughters and is
active in the family-oriented life of Spring City.
Energetically involved in both church and community
activities, Lee's obvious commitment to family is
reflected in the subject matter of many of her
paintings.

In 1983, she returned to Brigham Young University to
continue her education. There she earned a BFA in
painting. She has received numerous honors and awards
from the art community. She is a frequent participant
in presentations and workshops for artists and
educators and has been the featured subject of several
articles in national art publications, including
Southwest Art. Currently she is serving on the board
of directors for the Utah Arts Council, representing
visual artsits of the state. Her work is sold through
David Ericson Fine Art in Salt Lake City, UT and is
owned by art museums and by many private collectors.

Lee enjoys an active outdoor life in the wilderness
areas near her home in central Utah and that of the
southwest. This involves many hours hiking, or in the
saddle on her horses in the mountains east of her
home, as well as backpacking and river running the
desert canyons found in southern Utah and Arizona. The
feelings generated by these places she visits and
loves are communicated in her paintings by the rich,
intense colors of her landscapes even more than by the
pictorial elements. Her husband Joe believes the
objects Lee sees with her eyes are "transferred as
visual information through the conduit of her soul."
Lee Bennion's distinctive style, with its pensive,
elongated figures, is not so much portraiture as her
own special harmony between subject, emotional
atmosphere, and viewer. She says of her own work,

"Although I primarily paint the figure, portraiture is
not my main concern. My painting deals with form,
color, and feelings foremost. Often a likeness of my
model is also found in my paintings, and I enjoy this
when it happens. My figures are often slightly
distorted, never quite perfect, but hopefully still
reflect the warmth and goodness that I feel exists
within them. I am most pleased when these feelings
reach the viewer, and some kind of dialogue occurs
that goes beyond the recognition of the subject. My
landscape and still life paintings tell more how I
feel about a place or a set of objects that what they
actually look like. I take great liberty with colors
and form, painting often from memory or with out a lot
of direct reference to my subject. I am defiantly not
a plein-air painter!"

Bennion says she thinks the only real change in her
work over the years has been her increased ability to
get the paint to do what she wants it to. That change
is certainly evident in her recent work "abundant
details, more complex symbolism, a natural elegance,
and a greater delicacy and richness" but so is her
maturation as a woman. Although her beliefs and
concerns have changed little over the span of those
years, the increasing depth a well-lived life endows
is also part of the increasing richness of her
paintings. They truly portray who Lee Udall Bennion is
in the most intimate and basic sense.